But sometimes it’s hard to overcome the negative situation we’re in – we know that, we’ve been there as well. Negative thoughts attract more negative thoughts and things to be unhappy about, it can be a vicious circle, and no matter how much you’re trying to be positive, you’re sometimes just unable to.

Well, if you’re facing that problem, you can congratulate yourself right now: by recognizing that you’re stuck in a pattern of negative thoughts and beliefs and that you need to find a way to get out of it, you have made the most important step. Now let us show you some pretty effective ways out of the negativity.

1. Discover the Roots of Your Negative Thoughts and Beliefs

The first thing you now need to do is to find out where exactly your negativity is coming from. It’s not uncommon that people recognize something other than the actual root cause for their negative thinking patterns, or they just see the symptom, and treat the wrong thing.

To find out exactly what needs to be fixed in your belief system, please see our article about releasing negative beliefs – it has some effective tips and techniques you can use as a way to dig out what keeps you from being positive. For many people, just becoming aware of the thoughts that are holding them back is enough to defeat them, because the very reason that these negative beliefs have power over us is often the fact that we’re not aware of their existence; once we become aware of it, we may discover that it’s completely ridiculous, and that there’s no reason to hold on to it.

2. Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)

EFT is a powerful technique for taking back control of your mood, thoughts and emotions, so that, instead of instinctively reacting to events or people, you can be free to use your emotional energy the way you want to, and when you want to.

EFT involves making notes of the shifts in your emotions, and after a while, when you have collected some “records“, you will be able to identify the situations when you are most susceptible to falling down emotionally, and to replace them with the positive thoughts. EFT traditionally involves tapping specific points on the body (as a form of mental acupuncture) and repeating positive affirmations. You can learn more about this technique in this article.

3. Choose to Simply Stop

This technique is very simple: when you recognize a negative thought or reaction appearing in your mind, simply choose to stop thinking and feeling it.

It’s always your choice what you will think and feel, so this is a reasonable advice; however, some people are having more trouble than others with simply choosing to stop, so we recommend that you add some visualization to this: make it a routine to imagine that your thoughts are like a river, or like TV, and when a negative ones pop up, simply put them back to the river and let them go away, or switch the TV channel to something more positive.

4. Caricaturize Them

The last technique is also very simple, although it requires some creativity on your part: if something is bothering you so much that you can’t shake it off, then make up a story that will make it even worse, but that is so unbelievable that your mind will immediately dismiss it.

For example, if you’re having a hard time because you can’t afford to buy a house, you can affirm that it’s a very difficult situation indeed, that soon you won’t have a roof over your head, no place to sleep, actually you probably don’t have enough money to buy food and bills for the next month – and so on. If you felt down about not having enough money to buy a house, then taking it this far will make your mind realize that you feeling bad about the lack of money is completely ridiculous, and that there’s actually nothing to feel bad about.